Month: April 2017

I think one reason April (at least in its guise as Autism Awareness Month) is so stressful and aggravating for autistic people is the sheer amount of mis-/disinformation bandied about: since many of us like things to be correct, we feel the need to correct it. This often leads to friction, because, well, people don’t like to be corrected, even politely. Beyond that, I think there is often a mismatch in the intent of communication when it occurs between autistics and allistics.

I realize I’m generalizing here, but this is a fairly common trait; I think it’s one reason why autistic people are often said to “take things literally.” (But we could just as easily call it an allistic failure to say what they mean and/or mean what they say.) When someone says something, autistics tend to see it as an informational statement, and evaluate it as such. But for an allistic person, the main point of the statement might have been something entirely different — sharing something that was (unknowingly) inaccurate about autism, for example, might have been meant primarily as a social signal that the person cares about autistic people, not specifically as a sharing of facts. A lot of communication is meant this way: social sharing that signals virtue, for example, or reinforces the speaker’s place in a particular group.

Evaluating and correcting these statements on their factual content, then, tends to put the other person on the defensive — what they hear is a rejection of their social declaration, rather than a more neutral offering of more accurate information. Then we might get defensive, because we were just trying to help, but the other person reacted in a very negative fashion. And then we end up in a widening spiral of miscommunication that is very hard to get out of, because neither person realizes they are not having the same conversation at all.

As an aside, I think this is also what lies behind the phenomenon of person A getting upset about something they believe is true, but only getting more upset when person B tells them that it isn’t. On the surface this is confusing, because if they were really upset about that thing, wouldn’t they be relieved to find out it wasn’t true? But they’re not. I see this all the time, particularly when it comes to people sharing information of…shall we say…questionable origin. Sharing that “news” is often less a matter of informing others and more a case of declaring one’s allegiance, and challenging its accuracy is seen as questioning that self-identity. Plus, again, people generally don’t like to be corrected, even when your intention is to help them feel better by pointing out that the thing upsetting them isn’t really real.

Anyway. I’ve come to realize that this mismatch is actually one of the primary causes of miscommunication in my life. I will focus on a factual detail in someone’s statement, and respond to that, when that wasn’t the point of the statement for the other person. I am slowly starting to be able to notice this before I respond in a factual manner, but at least I’m usually able to recognize it now once a conversation has started to go off the rails. 🙂

P.S. Some of us also tend to take statements literally in the sense that we don’t “get” sarcasm or metaphor, but this is another way that it manifests, and it is the primary one for me. I think this is also related to the “social (or pragmatic) use of language” that is said to be difficult for autistic people (but which, again, could also be characterized by an allistic insistence on unnecessary communication).